


Disconnected

by Vuetyris



Series: Xev - Void corroded [1]
Category: Warframe
Genre: Child Death, Gen, Merged pain, Pre-Canon, Self-Mutilation, Somatic Link - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2019-09-14 04:45:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16906347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vuetyris/pseuds/Vuetyris
Summary: Xev can't save her - he's too far away from his operator.





	Disconnected

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr; moving to Ao3 for storyline reasons.
> 
> Xev before the neural sentry overtook his higher neurological functions.
> 
> -+- Kudos, comments and sharing are encouraged! -+-

He’s quiet as he watches the technicians work on the Void Tower’s circuitry, occasionally glancing away towards the lone entrance to the cramped room. The prime is unmoving as the flesh and blood workers give shifty glances, nudging off hush whispers into his general direction. He doesn’t listen to them.

“Xev?” a voice calls to him, deluding the focus on his duty. He barely moves his head in response.

It’s his Operator, a young girl, barely ten by Terran years.

“They’re talking about you; you know that?”

The primed Excalibur barely nods, shifting his ‘sights’ back to the murmuring workers.

His Operator is quiet; he can feel her unease as if it’s his own.

“Xev, can you please come back soon?” Again, he barely motions his head – a symbol he’s listening. “Something’s happening here … they’re not talking to us.”

There’s a squeezing in his chest, a tightening in organs he doesn’t possess. Static limbs he knows are his feel his Operator’s attempted movements through their transference link – anxiety saturating through the flexing surges between them. The prime barely flinches as he feels something swatting at his small Operator’s hand; he looks over at the still closed door.

“You alright, tin can?” One technician asks, but promptly hushed by her coworkers.

Through their link he can hear his Operator be hushed and scorned, feeling her recoil further back into her Somatic Cradle. Cushions pressed hard against her back, trying to make herself as small as possible. His false breaths increase – a carry-over from the transference – to mimic his Operator’s own. As much as he can understand, as much as he can feel through their sympathetic link, he can sense his Operator is in danger – and he can do nothing.

He stares at the closed door as the technicians speak among themselves, the later collecting themselves and their tools to carry on with the generic maintenance assignment. It usually takes a few hours to check all the emergency panels, but they’re running late. The taller woman of the trio jabs at the immobile prime as she passes, her companions halfway to the door and waiting.

“Hey, is everything alright?” She asks.

Nothing has changed in the transference link the prime can notice, hyper attentive to the little motions and movements his small Operator makes; she’s shivering, she hears screams and gunfire – as does he. He can feel his Operator force him forward, focus his attention to the given assignment. Step by step she guides him out through the door, drawing his gun as they move to the next destination.

The technicians are quiet, weary of him as his movements snap and click – a carryover from his Operator’s erratic concentration for herself and the mission. He can feel her bite her hand, the screams louder on her end of the link. “Just, finish the mission,” she spits out at him – he can feel that her heart has already dropped, words pulsating from her thoughts into his own.

Sentients.

There’s sentients where she is.

And he can’t save her.

His useless instincts to go to her aid is kicked back by her own intense focus, taking him and the technicians to the final location to check. His ‘ticks’ increase in intensity as his Operator can barely retain control over his higher functions and focus, her heart pounding as the screams … stop.

As the technicians settle out to check the final node he can hear through her line the hum of Sentients, moving closer around his cowering Operator. The pain in his right hand makes it almost numb, fluid spilling between teeth that are not his own. She’s biting her hand to keep quiet, her breathing erratic.

“Xev, can I ask you something?” barely creaks through their link. He snaps his head up, startling the technicians. “Was I… a good Operator?” His thoughts aren’t coherent, a muddled mess of her thoughts and his panicked own. What was going on, is she alright, where among his string of thoughts, turning away from the technicians. “I… I hope I was good enough, Xev.”

He feels the bite deepen on his hand, mouthing at bone. He shakes his hand to barely rid himself of the sensation. Behind him, as he shifts to walk to the door, the technicians are staring, whispering.

“What’s up with it?” One asked.

“I don’t know …” whispered the taller woman, motioning to stand.

The prime Excalibur jolts and stumbles as he feels something pierce through his chest and back, his maw splitting open to release a guttural growl. The female tech stumbles back as the prime claws at his chest, ripping at faux skin till black sprays across the ground. He hears screaming; terrified, panicked, unending as the phantom blade jams itself into her distant chest again – as real as if it was his own. She’s crying, crying out for him to save her from the Sentients.

Another jab, a painful pull downwards through body and gore.

The prime stumbles and leans against the wall, howling as he tries to dig out the transferred pain. Black ichor sprays against the wall as he tears at his chest, the blue glow of his energy illuminating the dimly lit room.

“Xev,” she barely creaks, then – a surge.

Static tears through the somatic link and blossoms into an electrical storm within his biological circuits, his head forced back by the unrelenting shock. He can barely control his motions, grasping at the ribs of the wall with slickened hands, slamming hard into the wall with his unmarred crest. A crescendo of pain, agony, blind motions to cease the unrelenting blossom of directionless energy expelled by his Operator.

Power to his higher functions cut out; his joints going lax, and he crumples on the floor with electrical twitches.


End file.
